Creating characters
Enjoyed the Q&A at a recent workshop I gave in Kilmarnock. It got me thinking about characterization. One of the attendees said she just didn't feel she "knew" one of the main characters in the sci fi book she was writing, and she wanted to know if she should just forge ahead or if she should try some exercise to figure it out.
Here's the thing--for a character to be a living, breathing presence on the page, you have to know him or her intimately, perhaps better than you know yourself. So how do we learn about ourselves? By analyzing how we react in a myriad of situations. You see a stray dog--do you call the animal shelter? Do you feed it half of your sandwich? Do you walk by, pretending you don't see? Do you move to the other side of the street because you are afraid? What if it were a homeless man instead--or a mother trying to control three small children? Your reactions to these everyday, common situations say something about who you are and can help predict how you will react in the future.
They are questions of human character, and they apply to fictional characters as well. I try to imagine some of these scenarios before I begin a novel, when I am just developing the characters. And even with that, sometimes I will find as I go along that the character I have created and the plot I outlined don't fit well together. My heroine often grows within the story so that the ending I imagined for her no longer fits the person she has become.
That's when I know I am on to something.
Here's the thing--for a character to be a living, breathing presence on the page, you have to know him or her intimately, perhaps better than you know yourself. So how do we learn about ourselves? By analyzing how we react in a myriad of situations. You see a stray dog--do you call the animal shelter? Do you feed it half of your sandwich? Do you walk by, pretending you don't see? Do you move to the other side of the street because you are afraid? What if it were a homeless man instead--or a mother trying to control three small children? Your reactions to these everyday, common situations say something about who you are and can help predict how you will react in the future.
They are questions of human character, and they apply to fictional characters as well. I try to imagine some of these scenarios before I begin a novel, when I am just developing the characters. And even with that, sometimes I will find as I go along that the character I have created and the plot I outlined don't fit well together. My heroine often grows within the story so that the ending I imagined for her no longer fits the person she has become.
That's when I know I am on to something.
Comments
Post a Comment